This week we are down both Ashgar and Kodra, and in part as a result… and part because we just adore her we talked our friend Neph into joining us. Before we start recording a podcast we generally try and scribble down a rough list of topics to use as an outline of where to leave the conversation next. After fifteen minutes of dead air… we finally start coming up with a few things and this weeks show is a result. We talk about the concept of “Peak Pokemon” and the glee that the media seems to have at heralding the downfall of the game. With Grace on my side we revisit the discussion about the Legion class changes, and our happiness to completely bury the concept of the Garrison and get out into the world and see it again. We do a deeper dive into the deepest dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV and Tam and Neph’s experiences leveling alts this week there. We talk a little bit about Dragon Age Inquisition, and my discovery of how Damage over Time classes work. So for a show where we didn’t think we had much to say… we certainly said a whole lot of it.

This week we had a really strange sequence of events that lead to quite literally half of our crew being out for one reason or another. Of all of them I think we happen to be the most jealous of Grace who managed to score tickets to the Final Fantasy Symphony tour thing that is roaming the country. This was the week of big patches with both the 3.35 patch in Final Fantasy XIV bringing us the Palace of the Dead, and World of Warcraft getting 7.0.3 containing all of the Legion class changes and new Transmog system. Additionally we saw the actual launch of Starbound and with it something unusual in the early access community… significant changes being patched into the final version. So this week we have a whole slew of topics related to all of those points.

This marks the second week of the majority of our cast being completely enthralled by the apparent phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. So as you would expect this weeks episode is a hefty bit of our hosts recounting their recent experiences. Pokemon Go is a story engine, and we have many stories to tell as a result. Additionally we talk a bit about Augmented Reality gaming in general, and whether or not Pokemon Go is the "Everquest" or the "World of Warcraft" of this genre. This week also saw us "getting the band back together" as it were and raiding for the first time in months in Final Fantasy XIV. We discuss our feeling about raiding again and the hopes of what we might accomplish in the coming months.

Grace and Bel made their way into the Legion Beta finally for World of Warcraft so we discuss a bit in the way of the set up for that expansion. Bel talks at length about his experiences playing a Demon Hunter and why he thinks this might be a class Tam would actually like. Tam deftly deflects and turns the discussion back around to the story of Final Fantasy XIV and our feelings about what seems to be the wrapping of this expansion. In other news we discuss two similar gaming experiences in Necropolis and the brand new chapter of the Monster Hunter saga. Finally we get into a length discussion about the ramifications of Pokemon Go and what it might mean for Nintendo and accepting that the mobile platform is actually viable.

This week the world has caught a horrible case of pokemonitis… and our stalwart AggroChat crew have not been immune. Instead of hanging out at home… we seem to have all been roaming our respective neighborhoods looking for invisible critters. So as a result we recorded a show that is almost entirely Pokemon Go talk. Towards the end we discuss our return to Final Fantasy XIV this week and our attempt to “get the band back together”. My Pokemans… Let me show you them!

To say we went off the rails while recording this show is to put it mildly. Not sure what was going on.. If it was just the general slap happy nature of being a long holiday weekend for all of us… or if something was in the water. It starts with me almost botching the introduction… and winds through a long series of tangents that I have no way of really properly mapping without thoroughly relistening to the show and documenting all the topic changes. We talk Harry Potter, and the new American Houses. However we also talk a whole bunch about where we ourselves fit into the Pottermore sorting hat quiz. I am apparently the only one that was surprised I sorted Gryffindor.

From there we get into a lengthy discussion about the Steam Discovery Queue and how sometimes it just gives the equivalent of a shrug emote. We also talk about how Steam is starting to feel like the various mobile app stores, with a slew of clone games for pretty much any genre. We delve into a topic about how MMOs actually make you less of a well rounded player. Namely that when you are playing an MMO… it becomes extremely hard to pull yourself away for those single player experiences. This devolves into brief discussions of Riders of Icarus, ArcheAge and Final Fantasy XIV. We talk about how cool it would be to get the band back together of sorts in that game. Finally we go into a long discussion about LARPing… or more so the kind of LARPing Kodra is used to that doesn’t quite sync with a bunch of the experiences we had with it.